The True Fight

Last summer Bronwen
and I made a solemn vow to enjoy the Summer of Yes. We did not invent the idea
–the original Summer of Yes had been a few years prior, when we weren’t living
in New York—yet we adopted and nurtured the concept as if we had birthed it
ourselves. I was spending half the summer in the city, which meant we’d be
living in the same place for the first time since we were seventeen. We were
both reeling from the end of relationships while trying to decipher what life
had planned for us, and we figured we should try new things. So we agreed to
say yes to almost everything.

One of us wanted to go
see an art exhibit at 9 AM on Saturday? Cool. The other one would wake up and be there. One of us found a dress
that would eat up the last few dollars of her paycheck? The other must strongly
encourage (as in force) her to buy it. One of us wanted to: go swimming in the
Hudson, take a last minute trip to LA, bungee jump, watch five straight
episodes of So You Think You Can Dance, eat two pints of ice cream in one
sitting, ride a mechanical bull, date a fellow employee, go hiking? The other
one had to go along and/or endorse said behavior. We were young, single, we had
summer tans. At the end we figured we’d at least learn more about ourselves.

And we did. We
definitely did. For example, I learned to never go on blind dates set up by
former employers. Twice I agreed to meet some guy who would be “perfect for me.”
Twice it went hilariously bad.

The first guy was nice
enough, but the night ended at nine with him throwing up on a sidewalk in
Hell’s Kitchen. He had insisted on taking five tequila shots. Alone.

The second guy, though.
He seemed great at first. He was from the south, he was funny, he feigned
interest when I talked about scintillating details of the federal budget. He
was not much taller than me, but I wasn’t worried about it. I texted Bronwen an
emoji thumbs up.

We were at a tiny
Mexican restaurant on Allen Street and I was giddy in that way Lower Manhattan
can make you feel in the summer. We were waiting for the check. I was just about
to ask him if he wanted to come out and meet my friends at a jazz club around
the corner when he leaned forward. “So,” he said. “You’re black, and you’re a
woman, and you’re getting a graduate degree.”

“Last time I checked,”
I said.

“Is that why you went
out with me?”

“What?” I felt myself
doing the squinty-eyed thing I do when I’m confused.

“Yeah. I mean, you’ll
probably never get married. Black women don’t get married.” He hesitated as if
perhaps he would stop there, but he plunged ahead. “But lets say you do. I can
tell you’re smart. But, I mean, you’ll probably never get the top jobs. Women,
especially women with families don’t do so well.” I could tell by his tone that
neither of these were social phenomena he personally endorsed. Yet, either way,
he stated them as if they were fact.

“Is this your idea of
good first date talk?” I asked.

He laughed. “Oh, come
on. Don’t be so sensitive,” he said. “I’m just saying. You kinda need me.”

We paid our bill. I
put him in a cab. I went to the jazz club alone.

Maybe he hit a sore
spot. At that moment I was less than a year away from graduating. I had no idea
what the future held, personally or professionally. (Spoiler alert: still
don’t!).

But it was more than that. I was
angry. I was oversaturated. People seem to like reminding my friends and me
that the numbers don’t look good. If we
want a family, it’s going to be a struggle. And if we want professional
success, it’s also gong to be an uphill battle. We can really only choose one, as
long as we understand that we may not get either.

Let me be clear. I did
– and I do – think these issues deserve discussion. I’m just ready to change
the framing.

***

Before last summer I had never even
heard of Sheryl Sandberg or Anne-Marie Slaughter. But in the past few months
they’ve popped up over and over again in casual conversation. They somehow seem
to have become captains of semi-warring factions. Both deny that they are
attempting to “represent” any movement, but it’s played out that way on the
ground – no two people have garnered this much attention for talking about
working women in a long time

The
two women disagree on plenty, and they take two completely different approaches
to examine gender inequality. But there is one thing they have in common – they
are fixers.

I
like fixers. The women in my life are
fixers. My mother, my friends, my sister, my grandmother. They assess. They
plan. They rectify. My grandmother will fight to get a law passed, my friends
will get an immigrant amnesty or help a juvenile beat a case, my mother will write
a computer program or assemble an Ikea bookshelf or find my third-grade book
report in a box in the back of the storage closet. I love this about them. My admiration for all of these women
is immeasurable. The idea of them living half-lives simply because they are
women – not voting or speaking out or having the dignity to make personal
decisions simply because they are women – is unimaginable. But, as we know, not
so long ago that was reality.

So I can see how attaining the
autonomy to be fixers on a large scale was a huge victory for women. To me,
that is part of the historical feminist construct – gaining the power to control
your life, your career, your family. The ability to fix more than just your
husband’s dinner. The ability to change the system.

Women have been fixing problems for
a long time. And women have been fighting for other women for a long time, too.
I sense just how rewarding and critical that is. But I wonder if there has been
an inadvertent downside. I wonder if it’s time to rethink fixing. I wonder if
it’s time to rethink feminism.

I can only speak for me. But my idea
of next level feminism: Acknowledging that women don’t have to be the fixers.
It doesn’t mean we can’t. And it doesn’t mean we won’t. But we should
acknowledge that we don’t have to be.

And that is where Sandberg and
Slaughter lose me. Isn’t that the
legacy that these two narratives have in common? We have to fix it. Yes,
Slaughter at least ventures into systemic analysis. But still, both of them
argue that women will have to do the dirty work.

In a way it’s the same sort of thing
I hear from church members or family friends or the sudden influx of impeccably intentioned
people giving me life advice: Work on your relationship! No, work on your
career! There aren’t enough men. The men aren’t grown up enough, you have to be
patient, you have to wait for them to grow up. There won’t be enough
opportunity. When an opportunity comes, you have to take it, even if it’s not
what you were looking for.

I’m tired of hearing about how the
odds are stacked. I have hit my limit with the good articles, the bad articles,
the pseudo-sociology articles, the follow-up support pieces, the response
pieces, the blogs, the comments on the blogs. I’m tired of the joking or
pitying commentary, the friend talk and family talk and date talk about black
women and marriage, or women who want to work and raise children. Mostly I’m
just tired of debating how women can make things better for women so that the
potential professional or personal landscape is better for women. The way we think about gender equality - the way we think about who gets screwed by its absence and who benefits from its existence - has to change.

***

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg
came to my Law and Social Movements class a few weeks ago. I tried to think of
a more clever way of introducing this story, but it kind of just stands on its
own. A Supreme Court Justice sat in my class, only the second female
Justice ever. Crazy. It’s not every day one of the most powerful women in America
shows up to speak to me and forty of my classmates, but my professor, Lani
Guinier, has the ability to make that happen. She’s a feminist pioneer in her
own right, and the first black female tenured professor at Harvard Law. (Side
note: is it appropriate to call a Supreme Court Justice adorable? Because she
WAS. I just wanted to go up and hug her but there was Secret Service and they
could totally tell because they were not smiling and staring at me the whole
time. She had this cute braid pleat thing, and I think there was a bow on the
end, and she was so tiny and regal and EEEE cute.)

Anyway, Justice Ginsburg sat in her chair
and told us stories about days of yore at the law school, stories about the
rampant sexism and the cutthroat competition. And when it came time for
questions my friend raised her hand and asked the Justice about her own
conceptions of feminism: How far had we come? How far did we have to go?

She paused for a second before
beginning a story she had clearly relayed many times. Orchestras used to be
sexist, she said, and women musicians had a very tough time getting employment.
But that was before they began doing blind auditions. Under pressure, orchestras
began holding auditions from behind a curtain. And soon after, orchestras
suddenly became about half women.

I could sense the triumph in her
voice, the sly tone of nostalgia. Women having the opportunity to demonstrate
to men that they can play on the same team? For Ginsburg, this was feminism
victorious. But frankly a lot of us were unimpressed. For our generation, the
anecdote was outdated.

Ginsburg is unquestionably a hero
who has been fighting for women’s rights for over half a century, so this isn’t
a knock on her. In fact, outdated anecdotes about social movements are probably
a good thing. That’s what should happen. Movements change. Goals evolve.
Approaches shift. Feminism in Justice Ginsburg’s time wasn’t wrong. After all,
progress is a matter of working with what you have.

But now we have more.

Ginsburg’s story got me thinking –
about Sandberg and Slaughter, and about Date #2, and about what feminism means
to me. I’d like to think now that women are at another crossroads. Or maybe I’m
just at my own crossroads. Or maybe we’re always at a crossroads. Whatever. My
point is that none of these conceptions – not Ginsburg, not Sandberg, not
Slaughter – are going deep enough for me. I want them to go farther. I want
them to go bigger.

Yes, Sandberg takes things a step
further than Ginsburg. It’s not good enough for her to just make it to the
orchestra. Sandberg is asking for more than just a shot at participation –
she’s arguing for a chance to lead. I read Sandberg’s 2011 Barnard commencement
speech recently, and it wasn’t all bad – the same sort of reach for the sky and
believe in yourself and go forth and prosper message that every single
commencement speaker ever has proclaimed. Her ethos is well meaning.

But at times I find it both
delusional and insulting. Underneath
all of those normal graduation-y words were some pretty loaded statements that
left me rolling my eyes. Statements like “We will never close
the achievement gap until we close the ambition gap,” or “Leadership belongs to
those who take it.”

It’s career manifest destiny language,
intended to inspire twenty-two year old women to rise to the top. But in the
process it shifts all the weight to women. The implication is heavy – women
have the potential for power and we’re just not taking it. There’s nothing
wrong with encouraging persistence, but since when is persistence the reason
women don’t hold more professional positions of power?

What’s more, much of Sandberg's TED talk and
speeches and book jacket focus on encouraging women to be more confident and
assertive. Not inherently bad qualities. And maybe some women should be more of
those things. Or maybe the workplace should adjust itself and make room for
alternative personalities. I can’t help but feel that Sandburg is encouraging
women to absorb more male qualities so they can make it in a male-dominated
work world. Maybe that’s practical, but it’s not aspirational. Change yourself
and you can be insanely successful, she seems to say. But I’m not sure I want
to change myself. I don’t want to have to be more assertive than I already am.
I’m assertive enough. If our voices aren’t being heard, maybe men should listen
better.

Slaughter gets at this in her Atlantic piece.
I mostly agreed with her. (Although, I do think she runs into some major class
problems that I won’t address here but are dealt with eloquently in this HuffPo piece.)
She goes deeper than Sandberg and she goes farther then Ginsburg – she talks
about the system and the structure in a way that I often found refreshing.
She’s really the only one to say that just making the orchestra isn’t enough – even
just being first chair in the orchestra isn’t enough. (First chair is an
orchestra term right? I quit the flute in third grade so I don’t know.) Just
making it on the team isn’t that useful if the team isn’t fairly structured.

But, as much as I agree, there are
parts of Slaughter’s argument that rub me the wrong way, too. While Slaughter
does highlight tangible incentives and methods for change, she focuses most of
them around how they are going to benefit women.

In
fact, both women state explicitly that until
women are at the table as much as men are nothing will change. Slaughter wrote, “Only when women wield
power in sufficient numbers will we create a society that genuinely works for
all women.”

Don’t get me wrong: the idea of a world with
half women leadership makes me giddy. But I’d like to believe that’s not our
only chance of ensuring a world that works better for women. Maybe we should
shift the burden. Maybe we should focus on a heightened level of male
accountability. I fear that, unintentionally, men are being let off the hook. I
don’t think women want that, and I’m not sure that men do either.

Also, while we’re at it, I’d prefer
a different title. “Why Women Can’t Have it All” seems like it’s supposed to
incite pity, not anger or action. Next time I read an article like this one,
I’d like to it to be in GQ. And I want it to be called “Hey Men, You’re Missing
Out If Your Workplace Doesn’t Have Enough Women at the Top, Here’s A Guide on
How You Can Help Fix That.” (It’s a working title, OK?)

***

It’s funny that
Sandberg and Slaughter are causing me to think this much, since managing my
work and my home life is last in a series of hurdles I haven’t yet begun to
jump. I have to find a career and a family before I even begin to experience
the competing concerns of career and family. Turns out Sandberg and Slaughter
don’t spend much time discussing this part of the process. Sandberg especially
seems to think that these things will just work out – you’ll find the partner
and the 2.1 children. But black women have been hearing a different narrative
for some time now.

You know what
seemingly every single news source says about black women– we never get
married. Especially not to black men. There are too many of us and not enough
of them. Black men are less educated and less successful than black women. A whole
pack of them are locked up, can’t get jobs, have kids, are cheaters, and on and on and on. (Remarkable, isn't it, how this construction manages to equally insult black women and black men?) Articles
like this one in Psychology Today (called, dramatically, Love in Limbo) keep warning black women that men, especially
men of color, are a scarce resource, to be competed over like food rations. (Note:
notice her egregious use of exclamation points in this article. OKAY I GET IT.)

Recently, a
friend of mine and I were sitting around the table eating popcorn while she
caught me up on the last few months of her love life. She had been dating a man
who seemed promising, but things had gone downhill. The story was unfortunately
similar to ones I’ve heard before – boy meets girl, boy woos girl, boy does
something sketchy, girl suspects or discovers that boy has illegal job or
secret wife/ kids or hidden identity. She told the story very matter-of-factly,
in part because that’s her personality but in part because she wasn’t that
surprised.

And,
as these conversations seem to go, it expanded into the two of us trading war
stories and lamenting over men, particularly black men, and opportunities for
love and the chances of ever finding partnership. I found myself feeling bad
for her. I found myself feeling bad for me. She quoted a male friend of ours.
“He told me that I was black, female, and graduating from Harvard Law School.
He said I might as well just give up now,” she said.

This is how a
lot of the conversations with my black friends tend to go. It’s not an
unfamiliar trajectory. We’re inundated in the discourse, in part because the blow-by-blow
given by Psychology Today echoes much of the (unsolicited) advice given to us
by various people. Black women should
be willing to date outside of our race, or rethink the importance of marriage,
or be okay marrying someone less successful than we are. (All of these, for the
record, are choices I find perfectly acceptable.) But most of all, we should be
prepared to not end up in a relationship at all. Because black women just don’t
get married.

Biases aside, I
have some amazing friends. Gorgeous, bright, concerned about the world, funny
and ambitious. Yet most of us spend an inordinate amount of time wondering if
we’re ever going to be able to reach the personal or professional goals we set
for ourselves. On one hand, it’s the only prudent decision.

But on the other hand,
it’s completely disconnected from our reality. Most of the women I have these repeated
conversations with aren’t looking for this future right now anyway. Right now
they’re too busy getting great educations and working at amazing jobs and going
on casual dates or drinking wine with their friends while watching Scandal to
worry about marriage. My friends and I haven’t even really considered if we
WANT marriage. But because the image of the perpetually alone black woman is
constantly reinforced, we end up worrying about it regardless.

More and more I’m
realizing that this, too is a narrative that needs renovating. I can’t deny
that women are at a numbers disadvantage, primarily because I don’t run the
census and I’m not a statistician. Sure, there might be a problem. But whose
problem is it?

***

This is a public service
announcement: Stop implying that it’s just my problem, or just a female
problem. At least respect me enough to imply that it’s everyone’s problem. Lets
put it this way: if you are a man – or even if you are a woman – and I have to
convince you that having a personal and professional system that demonstrably works
well for women and men is a good thing, you are sexist. It’s that simple. I
should not have to convince you. It’s not rocket science. It’s math.

My freighbor (neighbor friend) is
one of the most ambitious, strong, and thoughtful women I know. She told me a
story the other day of a conversation she was having with a male high-level
employee at a well known consulting firm. The firm hires just as many women as
men in their first-year associate class. But by the time it comes to making
management, the women have often left the company. Most of the partners are
men.

“I’m not sexist,” he told her, “but
it doesn’t really make sense. If the women are going to leave anyway, why
bother hiring them in equal numbers to men?”

She recounted this story to me indignantly.
“That’s the wrong question,” she said. “The question is, why isn’t that firm
looking into why all the women leave? Why aren’t they fixing the problem?”

Exactly.

It goes beyond sexism. This is much
more than a fight for equality. Or maybe it’s less than a fight for equality.
In fact, let’s ignore the fairness argument for a moment. The system should
work for me simply because I’m valuable. Not just as secretary, not just as staff,
but as management. I work hard, I’m smart, I bring things to the table that a male-dominated
hierarchy doesn’t. And I don’t just speak for myself. I speak for my mother, my
grandmother, my sister, other family, old friends, new friends, women I’ve met
in passing. It may be presumptuous of me, but I’m going to say I speak for
every woman who is qualified for any job, be it janitor or attorney or CEO. I
speak for assertive women and not-so-assertive women, soft-spoken women, women
in pencil skirts or pantsuits.

Of course we should build a system
that works for women like me as much as it works for working mothers as much as
it works for men. Why the hell wouldn’t we? Where’s the conflict?

***

I know some really great men. I know
a ton of them. My father is incomparable. My male friends are incomparable.
They believe in stuff like female equality.

So what the hell happened to men in
the fight for women’s rights? I’m speaking mostly from my own observations, so
let me be clear that I know there are exceptions to my statements. But I don’t
really see men on the frontlines. I know that when Todd Akin says something
ridiculous, plenty of men are outraged. But what about other times, when the
scenario is less extreme? I know that there are many men out there who support
women’s rights – rights to equal pay, reproductive rights, etc. So why does it
seem like women are the only ones who show up to the fight? Why is tacit
support enough? Especially when, on the other side, there are plenty of men
fighting to take rights away from us?

A friend of mine majored in
engineering in undergrad at Columbia, one of the few females in the program. I
didn’t know her then (lets be honest, never once did I step foot in the
engineering building) but we’re in law school together now. Earlier this week
we were discussing how male dominated her academic undergrad experience was,
and she shrugged. “You know what? I find being a woman in law school much more
difficult than being a woman in engineering school.”

I understand what she means. For me,
at least, I find it sort of eerie. At a school where it seems like everyone is
in multiple organizations focused on all sorts of advocacy issues, I’m always
surprised at how few men there are at talks or meetings focused on women’s
rights. Last weekend I noticed that the Journal for Law and Gender was having a
meeting in the library. It was packed to the brim, and almost every single
person there was female.

And it’s not just at Harvard. Look
at the numbers in Congress. In the Senate last year, there were almost five
times as many men as women (83 compared to 17.) Yet, of the fifteen bills or resolutions introduced that explicitly dealt with recognizing women or women’s rights, only
four of them were introduced by men. The other eleven were introduced by women.
In the house, where there were also about five times as many men as women (363
to 72), thirty-two bills were introduced. Eleven of those were introduced by
men, while twenty-one were introduced by women.

It seems like even the men who cheer
are often cheering from the sidelines. I think those men – and all men – should
also be in this game. I think they should be held equally accountable for
systemic gender equality. I find that when I request accountability I am often
pleasantly surprised. And after all, every time we indicate that the burden and
the benefit are both for women, aren’t we, in a way, disempowering men?

I hope this goes without saying but
don’t think all men are sexist. I don’t think most men are. I don’t think men
don’t care. I don’t think they’re immature Neanderthals. And I’m also not
arguing – nor do I want to – that having strong women in power is necessarily
any more important than having strong men in power.

I just think that, in a way that is
no one and everyone’s fault, men have been less invested in the movement for
women’s rights. I just think somehow men got comfortable with a system that
doesn’t work for women. Or if it does make them uncomfortable, it’s not
uncomfortable enough to incite action. All I want to do is throw out an idea – maybe we should all get in the business of reform, both professionally and
personally.

And in order to do that, it can’t
just be about fairness. It can’t just be about equality. It has to be about
value. Women are valuable. In the personal context, fair is basic. Fair is fidelity.
Value is a much higher standard. And professionally? Fair is when a consulting
firm hires a class of half women and half men. Value is when that firm adjusts
to ensure that women make management.

I’m tired of hearing about how the
odds are stacked, especially from
people who aren’t working to change the odds. I’m tired of hearing that
if I absorb all these manly qualities, I’ll move further up, that when I move I
should think about where the most eligible men are, that me or my friends
should make excuses for men who are bad partners because it takes them longer
to grow up. I’m tired of women writing
books and articles and commencement speeches about how women should change
themselves, or how women should change their environments.

All of this puts responsibility on
the woman to prove over and over again why she’s worth a promotion, a date, a
healthy relationship. And once I’ve proven that, where’s the part where you
prove yourself to me? Where’s the part where men work to be good colleagues,
good bosses, good men because they realize how invaluable we are?

I’m going to try something new. Anger and resentment just isn’t my style. I’m going to whip out my own pity arsenal and use it more often. But I’m not going to pity women. I’m going to pity men. Next time some thirty-three-year-old idiot breaks up with my friend because he’s not ready to grow up, I’m going to pity him. Not her. And if me or one of my friends isn’t hired or isn’t promoted because she’s a women, well, that sucks. But in the end it’s their loss, not ours.

It’s
not that I think women should sit back and do nothing. Women should
continue to advocate change. I just think men should be in here, nailing and
hammering too.

I’m
tired of being so afraid of what I can’t have that I’m not asking myself what I
want.

What
I want is to go to yoga, have dinner parties, read books, go dancing with my
friends.

As
for what I don’t want? I don’t want patronization. I just want partners.
I want to work with and be friends with men who will fight with me for all
women. And on that note, if I’m going to date, I want to date people that value
me, rather than imply I need them over introduction margaritas.

We
have to change the nature of the debate. Valuing partnership isn’t just a boon
for black women. It’s a boon for everyone. And changing the workplace structure
isn’t only good for women, it’s good for everyone. Let’s shift the onus. Let’s take feminism further.